The Battle of Iwo Jima was a 35 day battle in the Pacific between the U.S Marines and the Imperial Japanese Army. The island was significant in terms of tactical positioning because it had three airfields. The battle was one of the bloodiest in the War of the Pacific, with casualty and loss numbers and of about 25,000 for the Americans and about 20,000 for the Japanese. The image of the flag being raised was captured by photographer Joe Rosenthal on the fifth day of the battle. It immediately became an iconic image, flashed around the world, reproduced widely. It won the Pulitzer Prize.

On the 12th of February 1993, three year old Jamie Bulger went missing from the Bootle Strand Shopping Center in Liverpool. Two days later, his body was found by some railway tracks. Jon Venables and Robert Thompson were captured on CCTV leading the boy away. Although the boys were witnessed by a number of people walking around with the baby, people were unsure what to think or do. Was he just a little brother crying? With details emerging about abduction, people were struck by the thought it could be child killers displayed on their televisions. The cruel and calculated fashion in which the boys tortured Jamie filled a nation with shock, disbelief and anger. They had left his beaten body on the train tracks, believing a passing train would make it look like an accident or it would cover up evidence. On the 20th of February, Venables and Thompson were charged and became the youngest convicted murderers Britain in 250 years.

The Thalidomide Tragedy was the result of marketing and greed for profit over the well-being of patients. Developed in 1957 by Chemie Grünenthal, little or no testing was done on the drug before it was happily prescribed to pregnant women. After an abnormal increase of the rise of rare birth defects, the efficacy was questioned. The final estimates of damage rendered can hardly be measured. Tens of thousands of babies dies, over ten thousand were born with irreparable nerve and organ damage. Most common of the defects were the malformed legs and arms of the child. In 1968, the company, with it's army of legal representation, pressured a paltry settlement with the families affected. The battle for compensation continues now in over 40 countries. The drug remains in use in Latin America as a treatment for leprosy.

Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy is the man most remembered for the ‘Red Scare’ in American politics during the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. It was just another name for “witch hunts”. The idea that Communist sympathisers, subversives and spies were “working and shaping policy” by working in government positions gave McCarthy licence to go after whoever he suspected. And anyone could be a suspect. Proof or evidence was often immaterial. Five years of interrogating high-profile citizens and other “elite” officials made McCarthy an untouchable. Scare-mongering and intimidation tactics were openly used in his hunt to expose the activities of citizens, with questionable results. It wasn’t until he went after members of the Army and the televised Army-McCarthy hearings that public opinion finally turned against him.

"By jungle law, the ghost who walks calls forth the power of ten tigers!"

The Phantom swore an oath on the skull of his murdered father to fight evil. He is a legacy hero, passing on the mantle of The Phantom from father to son. Known by those who fear him as 'The Ghost Who Walks', the seemingly immortal figure is in his 21st incarnation. The hero has been in publication from 1936 and continues today. He is also a member of the Defenders of the Earth (and my favourite Defender). The Phantom has no superpowers, relying instead on his wits, his fists and his two .45's. If there was no Phantom, there would be no Batman.

The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty first set up in Kyoto, Japan in 1997. The treaty has a common goal of reducing man-made emissions globally, in an attempt to arrest the damage caused by the greenhouse effect . Each member state has agreed to different parameters, with aims reduce their current emissions based on evidence of past emissions. One has to question the motives of countries not committing to ratifying the treaty. Apart from shrinking profit margins, what is the big picture they have in mind? Though far from perfect, a bunch of scientists say the protocol is a "small but essential first step towards stabilising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases."

The story of Ted Bundy is that of a depraved and psychotic serial killer. Between in 1974 and 1978, Ted Bundy was responsible for the murders of at least 30 people, though he had confessed to his lawyer before his execution that the number was over 100. He was considered charming and good-looking and would often present himself as an authority figure or pretend to be in need of help to lure his victims closer before kidnapping them. Details of his killing and interactions with the bodies afterward make for gruesome reading.

The city of Dresden, located in the north of Germany was a beautiful city, rich with culture and historical buildings. It had escaped any bombings during the war and became a safe-haven for refugees. There are a few theories about why the city would be bombed so completely with the end of the war in sight. Perhaps it was to strike a final killer blow to the Reich and as a veiled and callous warning to the Russians that they could not compete with the air fire-power of the Allies, in case they decided to renege on negotiations made at the war conferences. The final death toll is unknown because of the high number of refugees.

The U.S say that Hussein's forces were increasingly using designated civilian shelters for cover of their military operatives and communications. The Iraqis state that it was well know that the building was used as a civil-defence shelter during the Iran-Iraq war. Each side counters and dispute the claims the other makes. Meanwhile, 408 innocents are incinerated, shadows of their bodies and handprints burned onto the walls.

The Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg began his meetings with Hitler in his mountain retreat. Nazi agitators had already been stirring up Anti-Semitic hatred throughout Austria. One month later the military machine that was the German army rolled freely into Austria. In fact, the Wermarcht soldiers were greeted like heroes, hundreds of thousands lined the streets to see them arrive. Hitler's homeland had been welcomed into the Third Reich.

Nelson Mandela was a south African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician. Arrested in 1962, he was sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the state. He would spend there next twenty seven years behind bars. An international campaign to see him freed was successful when the last head of state F. W. De Klerk released him from Victor Verster prison in 1990. The two men would join forces to see the first multiracial and democratic elections in the country in 1994, resulting in Mandela leading the ANC to victory and his election as the first black South African president. He passed away in December 2013.

The 1996 Canary Wharf bombing, (also known as the Docklands bombing) by the Provisional I.R.A, brought an end 17 months of ceasefire. During this time Irish, British and American leaders were working toward a solution to The Troubles. They had used a small lorry containing half a tonne of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, semtex and other high-explosives and sugar for the bomb. Although a coded warning was telephoned in, and the area evacuated, two men died and a further 39 were severely injured.

At the end of WW2, Germany was split and controlled by the Allies over 4 zones, but tensions between the democratic West and communist Russia led to the building of the Berlin Wall. The former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) retained the Soviet influence and West Germany, influence from the west. The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, MfS) or Stasi was formed, following the model of the KGB and acted as a secret police machine, gathering information on the sixteen million population. Although starting small, they grew to be one of the most feared and despised organisations in existence. Using tactics of collaboration, threat, surveillance, counter-intelligence and espionage to collect and document their own people, they went to extraordinary lengths to invade the lives of every East German. They were finally shut down in 1990 and their documents became available to all who were surveilled . Parallels can be seen in some information gathering techniques used by modern governments.

To properly describe how and why the USSR dissolved is pretty lengthy. A number of factors including growing nationalism from individual states, a stagnant economy, the easing of tensions between the USSR and the U.S, Perestroika and glasnost revelations and of course the Chernobyl accident all played significant parts in the demise of the USSR.